


Fireflies and Crickets

by Oparu



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-29
Updated: 2010-08-29
Packaged: 2017-10-11 08:03:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/110204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oparu/pseuds/Oparu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Kathryn Janeway had to make a very difficult decision in the first few weeks in the Delta Quadrant and only tells Chakotay about it years later? Angst.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The subject of this story might not be comfortable for all readers. It's not to make a political statement, it's just to explore an idea.

It only takes him five minutes to be worried about her. Harry, Tom, even Seven could be gone for at least ten before he started to wonder where they were, but Kathryn?

She's special.

Not that he doesn't trust her not to get lost, or that he thinks somehow, he'll lose her on this little planet with the weak gravity Tom's been calling 'Planet of the Mushroom People" even though neither fungi nor people seem to be in abundance.

He doesn't ask with Tom. It's better just to smile and appreciate that the pilot puts so much effort into making his shipmates laugh.

Chakotay leaves his survey group packing supply containers by the light of their wrist beacons and checks his tricorder. Kathryn's signal is just over the ridge. She must have found something. He plays twenty questions with himself: will her incredible discovery be animal, vegetable or mineral? He's leaning towards animal; she has a flair for furry things.

He's about to call her name when he nearly trips over her. The great Kathryn Janeway, captain of [i]Voyager[/i] is lying in the grass on the hillside, smiling up at him.

"Don't scare them."

"Them?" He looks up, following her outstretched hand and there they are: a dancing swarm of phosphorescent insects. Swaying in the evening air, they pay no heed to either of them.

"Lie down." Her suggestion is in no way an order, but he joins her as if it were.

Kathryn sighs, returning her hand to rest on her stomach. There's somehing more than wistful in her sigh and he tilts his head towards her.

"Remind you of home?"

She chuckles. "A little. I wasn't-" she pauses and rolls her head towards him. "For once I wasn't hinking about Indiana."

"That's a new one."

That makes her laugh a second or two longer and to his great surprise, she reaches across and touches his arm.

"I need to confess something."

"It's all right, Captain, we all hate leola root."

All he gets that time is a tiny smile and he knows something wrong. Maybe it's in her wording. Confessions are not something that come easily to Kathryn Janeway.

He pats the hand on his arm and then her small hand creeps down to take his.

"I thought-" she pauses, clears her throat, and continues sadly. Her tone is grey and sombre, absolutely nothing like the swirling beauty of the lights overhead.

"Mark and I wanted to have children. Did I ever?"

He shakes his head, but it's so dark she can probably only hear the noise against the grass.

"You'd be a great mom."

"If I ever found the time."

There's that sigh again, and the fireflies are forgotten. His eyes are only for her.

"It was a three week mission. Track down Tuvok, find the Maquis rebels and go home. We could have done it inside of two. I thought I had pre-flight jitters, or the stabiliers weren't adjusted quite right. I even made an appointment to see the doctor, back when he was human and I thought I'd be home before it mattered."

His heart skips in his chest. When she used confession, she meant it. Chakotay squeezes the hand in his.

"It's all right."

"It's not." Her body rolls towards him but her gaze stays fixed on the fireflies. Sighing again, she falters but continues. "I couldn't...I just couldn't. I'd trapped us all in the Delta Quadrant. I didn't know you, I couldn't ask Tuvok..."

She dances around the subject as neatly as the fireflies overhead. Should he ask? Should he leave it alone until she finds the right words?

He strokes her knee, wishing he could have taken the choice away then that left her so raw now. Chakotay can't blame her; he'd never judge, but he can guess how much it hurt her.

"How did you?"

"Overrode the medical lockouts in sickbay and spent one of my precious days off curled up in bed with that book you lent me."

"The poetry of Bajoran travelling vedics? Not--" he stops himself. Of course she couldn't read Dante, not when she was loosing Mark's... "You told me you didn't find the time."

"Once true and mighty trunk lies twisted, wet with shattered hopes and dreams laid bare. Sweet wood of sunlit hill and iron born of warm mountain stone are desolate, lost and cold. The seas tend to all; the great ship Bodrea, will never sail again."

That's it, word for word, the poem he told her he'd always favoured. Not only did she read it, but she committed it to memory.

"Kathryn-"

_It's not her fault. No one will blame her. She made the best of a difficult situation._ All of it feels hollow, and would sound it if he could voice any of the words.

"When his letter came...I was relieved. He was happy. He had a wife and maybe they'd have children. Mark could let me go without any entanglements. Even though- I- I was the one who wanted them."

When her voice cracks, shattering like the ship in the poem on the rocks, he breaks all of their rules and holds her. The fireflies don't know what their seeing and he doesn't care if anyone else joins them.

No one he loves would bear this alone. Not B'Elanna, not Sekaya, not Kes or Seven of Nine.

Chakotay can't say it's all right because from the way she trembles it is not. He can hold her, and he does.

When the fireflies disappear and the darkness holds them both, he dries her tears.

"In my traditions, we say that souls make a choice to live what they do. I chose my parents, just as you chose yours."

Her hand splays out on his chest, searching for answers.

"Who would chose...?"

"Someone who wasn't ready. Maybe someone who only wanted to dip their toes into this reality. When they're ready, they'll come back. Not necessarily to-"

"You can say it." She sits up and wraps her arms around her knees. "Not to me."

"Kathryn--" Chakotay sits behind her, wrapping his arms around her and holding her close between his own legs. "If you give yourself the time for children, you will be an exceptional mother. If you do not...no one will blame you. You couldn't have known you'd be here. You couldn't have anticipated that your first officer would be a criminal and you wouldn't have anywhere to turn."

He leans closer, resting his chin next to her ear. "There's no blame here. Just you and me and the fireflies, and none of us can judge. There are some things in life that just are, and we can't make them more or less than that."

Her head rests on his arms. No one would look for them once a tricorder showed them together. The night is young. The second of the moons is rising slowly and far overhead, fireflies find patterns in the sky.


	2. Chapter 2

She hasn't left the window. She knows he's there. Kathryn's been standing in front of the starlines, ignoring him even though she's the one who asked him to stay.

Chakotay's already cleared the table, put away everything they've eaten and he's half-done with his tea. Hers sits forgotten, probably cold, but he leaves it. She'll speak when she's ready. There's no rushing this.

She picked at her food, made terrible conversation but her hand landed on his half-way through the main course and it wasn't until long after dessert that she took it away. There's a need in her eyes, something more primal than the fireflies overhead when she confessed her terrible secret.

Nearly five years ago, she left Deep Space Nine carrying Mark's baby and Kathryn couldn't let it come to term. They avoid words like 'death' and 'abortion'. Even 'terminated' brings a darkness to her eyes that he can't stand.

It was, and then it was not. A fragile, tiny little life that walked with her as long as it could before she had to let it go before it posed too great a risk.

Chakotay's run it over in his mind, wondered how it would have been if the baby had lived. Their first year was treacherous. Their own relationship, his and hers, was on thin ice several times. Kathryn fought with B'Elanna, with Tuvok, with Tom... She was a lone voice in an unknown quadrant and having a child would have been one more responsibility in a sea of desperate needs. One so vast it would have swamped her. He shares the way she must have seen it. Could she have gone into labour during a Kazon attack? Handed the baby off to someone else while they exposed Seska as a spy?

Would she have had to hide the baby from the Vidiians? Would it have been with them down on New Earth?

That thought aches more than the others. For the six weeks they were down there, in all that time when she was free, they could have been raising her child.

It's a foolish thought; one he can never share with her. Chakotay can picture her happy. He can see her walking through the woods with a baby in her arms, smiling, laughing and explaining the names of all the trees they pass.

That can't be why he's here: to reminisce about things that never were.

Would he have accepted a pregnant Starfleet captain above him? Would he have fought her tooth and nail until she let him captain Voyager for their own safety?

Could he have done that to her? Would he have been that unfair?

Kathryn's head turns ever-so-slighty towards him at the table.

"I haven't told Mark."

Chakotay leaves his chair. He takes two steps towards her and waits, looking at her reflection in the window before her.

"You don't--"

"Don't I?" She breathes in so slowly that it's almost a sob. "I was going to marry him. Certainly I--"

"You don't." Three more steps and he's directly behind her. Chakotay could put his arms around her now, but he can't. As desperately as he wants to comfort her, there's nothing he can say.

"He married someone else."

"It was his child."

"That _you_ wanted."

"Doesn't he deserve to know?" Her sharp tone shatters and Kathryn sags a little, clinging to the wall with one hand. "I took--"

He can't watch her anymore. Chakotay grabs her, too tightly to be friendly and hugs her so close to his chest that he could crush her.

Kathryn doesn't protest, she doesn't even try to pull away. She allows him to hold her and together, something begins to shift. She can't cry. She hasn't cried. Not for the terrible choice she had to make.

"Wouldn't you want to know? If it was your child and I--"

He pushes her back, gently covering her mouth his fingers. "I'd want to know you were safe and happy. I'd want to know that you're taking care of yourself, that you might someday forgive me for not being with you when you needed me. But I'd ne--"

Chakotay's gone too far. That's something he's not permitted to say.

Lifting his hand away from her mouth, she holds it close to her heart. "You'd never what, Chakotay?"

He closes his eyes instead of speaking. She's so raw that he's naked in front of her. How can he tell her that if he was Mark...he'd never have let her go. He'd be living on Earth, alone with her dog, thanking whatever gods who were listening because as long as she was alive, he's complete.

How can he tell her, this woman who's the centre of his universe, that he would do anything to make her life easier? That if he had her, no force could take him away.

"I never would have found someone else." He should stop. He should stop talking right now, but he doesn't. "There could never be."

Kathryn's eyelids flutter, her hand clutches his desperately before letting it go. "Chakotay, I'm not, I'm not worth--"

"You're worth everything."

Her eyes are haunted, worn beyond measure as she looks up at him.

"I can't believe that."

He touches her cheek, then cups it in his hand. "Use your letter to write your mother. Tell her how much you miss her and how Neelix can't make her brownies. What Mark doesn't know, won't hurt him. You don't need him to punish you for something you already hate yourself for."

"Shouldn't I?" She doesn't pull away but he can feel the effort it takes her to stay. "I killed my child."

"Kathryn, it's not like you shot a child in the head with your phaser."

"I prevented one from being born." She shakes her head, chin trembling. "All that- Chakotay- it was over so fast. One moment it was there, and then next it was gone. Washed away. I felt, I still feel so empty."

Her eyes tear up but she's still not crying. Chakotay hugs her again, holding her stiff little body because when all else fails, that's what he can do. She's not alone now, and as small of a comfort that is, it's what he has to give her.

"It's all right." He might be lying, but even that, he'd do for her.


	3. Chapter 3

The bed creaks when Kathryn leaves it. It's hard not to be startled by the sounds of a house after seven years on a starship. The hum of the engines is missing, and the stars outside the window are still. There's a hint of a chill in the air, and Chakotay smiles a little into the darkness. There are seasons here. On Earth, things change.

Indiana is all that she's said it is but it's hard to see what part of Kathryn came from this pastoral place. The trees are sparse but tall when they appear on the edges of fields of grain and corn. Farming is more hobby now than necessity, but there are still farmers, still vast tracts of land covered in vines and stalks.

The Janeway home has a forgotten, even old feel to it. It's been redone several times, but the original plan, a nineteenth century farmhouse, complete with cellar, pantry and porch, is still there. Some polymerised steel and triple glazed glass has replaced wood and panes, but the character is the same. Her parents insisted on it.

The well-preserved wood is why the floor whispers when she paces and the bed they share is an antique as the quilt he follows her to the window with. Some of their former crew are out there, camping in the fields around the house. Everyone would have fit inside, and Gretchen would have insisted on it if the weather wasn't still so fair. The early autumn is still warm enough to make camping pleasant. Kathryn has no interest in doing it, but the rest of the crew is trying it out.

Tom and B'Elanna have Miral in a tent with them, making it her first camping trip. Harry and Seven are making an attempt at it as well, even if Seven finds the practice of sleeping in a tent far from efficient, she's willing to try new things. The Doctor was too busy basking in his new position as leader of the holographic rights movement to pull himself away, but his comm message that morning made them all smile.

Tuvok and his wife are the most practised of the lot. T'Pel calmly told him earlier that they've camped as a couple and as a family for many decades on Vulcan and other planets. They've even braved Andor with the correct gear. Chakotay's never been exactly sure what he expected Tuvok's wife to be. She is Vulcan, and so well organised that she is an easy counterpart to Tuvok. There's a softness to her he admires; her sense of patience, that has frustrated him in Tuvok, endears T'Pel to Chakotay in a way where he feels like he's known her just as long. Her serene presence relaxes everyone, and seeing Tuvok and T'Pel together forever chases the idea that Vulcan's don't love.

If Kathryn's noticed his inventorying of her friends, she hasn't commented. She's said little since everyone arrived. The gathering is her mother's idea, and though she glows in the presence of her beloved crew again, she's still reserved. Homecoming hasn't been easy, and the whirlwind of interviews and debriefings has everyone exhausted.

Admiral Nechayev finally intervened and gave them the weekend off. Something Chakotay senses Gretchen's hand in it, but he can't blame her. While the junior officers and enlisted crew were debriefed quickly and sent to their families, the senior officers have been in and out of Starfleet Headquarters for the last month. They're all tired, and as always, Kathryn bears the brunt of it.

She's seen Mark twice since they came back, even met his wife, but she's shy around him. Dinner with the four of them was pleasant enough, but her hand stayed on Chakotay's knee all through the dessert and the time they spent talking over half-empty cups of coffee and forgotten glasses of wine. He likes, even respects Mark, and Carla seems just as pleasant.

Kathryn made it all the way back to the transport terminal before she cried, but they've been together long enough now that he knew what to say.

There's an intimacy to their relationship that he can't quantify. Perhaps being born out of need makes the connection between them stronger. He's never spent so much time, energy and thought on a woman who didn't share his bed, and once they became lovers, the foundations of everything were already laid so firmly that it was barely a change. Kathryn Janeway is the last woman he'll ever love, and that's put a peace in his heart he depends on.

The physical aspect has always been something stress-relieving rather than emotional, as if she's separated her heart from her body. It's not cold and certainly not empty, but making love has been a less necessary part of their relationship than the cerebral or emotional sides.

He grabs the quilt, something too beautiful to be anything by handmade, and chases her to the window with it. Wrapping it around them both, he holds her naked body to his chest and follows her gaze out the window. The moon is low over the horizon, pale gold and beautiful. Kathryn shivers into him, turning her head just enough to see his eyes before she continues to stare.

"Can you hear them?"

Quieting the distractions of her breasts against his arms and her cool fingers on his skin, Chakotay listens and shrugs.

"After _Voyager_, it sounds like chaos."

Kathryn pats the back of his hand and nods. "Crickets."

"Not warp coils."

Turning inside his arms, she kisses his neck, smiling. "Not warp coils."

He starts backing up, heading for the bed and she follows willingly enough. The bed creaks again as they climb back in. Her head's on his chest before she says anything else.

"This is my parents' room."

"I was wondering why there weren't physics diagrams all over the walls."

Kathryn laughs weakly, searching for his hand before she relaxes. "I was probably conceived here."

She's opened the door and he can't let it go by. The middle of the night in her parents' room might not be the place to have this conversation, but it's been haunting them both since they got home. _Voyager_ is safe. The crew's home and with her upcoming promotion, her responsibilities have shifted. Starfleet offered him a few ships, even _Voyager_, but he's had his fill of space for now. An office on the Academy's campus, with a view of hers at Starfleet Headquarters, feels more like home. Even if the nights on Earth are full of sound, and the stars are still.

"Kathryn."

She stiffens, and she's not asleep. Sighing and forcing herself to relax against him, she lifts her head and looks up.

"I don't know."

Stroking her hair back from her face, Chakotay lets his hand rest on her neck. He could be complete without children. They'll grow old together, arguing on how to grow tomatoes, and knowing that, he's content. Seeing her with Miral, he can't help wondering. She's so good with a baby, and the nurturing, caring part of her that he loves so much might not find as much to do as an admiral. Her schedule will be hectic, but there are enough admirals to fill a ballroom. She won't be alone and her choices are as much Starfleet command's as her own.

If she wants a family, there's no time like the present. She knows that.

Kathryn rolls to her side, putting her back to him as he spoons up against her.

"We could get a dog."

She laughs at that. "We _are_ getting a dog."

It takes her a few breaths to keep laughter from becoming tears, and she holds his arms desperately close.

"Chakotay, I don't know. I- once I-- If things had been different, I would have been so happy to tell him. I don't know how Mark would have taken it, but I might have been too happy to notice."

More sighing of the wood, and she rolls back to smile at him.

"I like children."

Kissing her forehead, he brings his hand to her hip. "So do I."

"It wouldn't--"

"No, it wouldn't bring that one back."

Her eyes close and in better light, he'd see the tears instead of sensing them.

"I don't deserve...how do I justify having a child now, with you, when I--"

Pushing her gently to her back, he wipes the tears off her cheek and rests his knee across her hips. "You don't. There's no justice in birth or death. Wonderful parents are infertile, terrible parents have children, babies die, parents die; the universe is by nature unjust and random."

"Science isn't fair?"

"Something like that."

Her fingers run along his back, and finally settle in his shoulders.

"I had medical give me a hypospray to cancel our inhibitors." Her eyes flick to her suitcase. "It's in there."

He kisses her cheek. "Thank you for telling me."

"I still don't know."

"It's not a sure thing." Chakotay can't remember the exact chance of conception, but he suspects she might.

"It might take awhile." She looks at the suitcase again and this time her eyes linger. "It could take years."

Trailing his mouth down her chest, he leaves her and digs through her suitcase until the hypospray is in his hand.

Kathryn looks from it to him, and fear flashes through her eyes. He starts to pass it to her, but she shakes her head.

"You have to do it."

The wound is still there; too many bad memories linger from her self-inflicted hypospray seven years ago.

"We don't have to do anything."

Sitting up, she reaches for his hands and pulls them close with the hypo still against his palm. "I think I do. I've wanted- I still--" Her breath shudders through her chest. "I would like to have a child, and I would very much like it to be yours."

Kissing her first, he promises everything will be all right. He lifts it to his own neck first, and the hiss doesn't make her wince. He changes the cylinder. Knowing how hard this is for her and having to reconcile that with the ecstatic notion of having a child with her, he pauses.

Kathryn's hand covers his when he brings it to her neck. This hiss closes her eyes and the moment it's over, she wraps her arms tightly around his neck. Holding her there, in the cacophony of a late summer night, he can see a universe of possibilities where they take their children camping with Tom and B'Elanna. Where Harry gives their daughter music lessons, and Seven teaches their son that galaxies spin, and that dark matter should be avoided. They'd have to make it out to Vulcan, and meet Tuvok's children and grandchildren. His sister would spoil any children of theirs terribly, and Gretchen would make sure they understood their traditions.

Her eyes are curious when she releases him. "You're light years away."

"I love you."

Kathryn crawls into his lap, removing thoughts of sleep and replacing them with the infinitely more pleasant idea of her body against his. "I love you, and I'm all right. I might be a wreck in the beginning, and in the middle, and definitely in the end."

Now he chuckles, dropping the hypospray to the table by the bed and forgetting about it. "I love you when you're wrecked too."

"I don't know why."

"The universe is inherently random."

"You, Chakotay, are far too important to be a random occurrence."

"Maybe I'm a gift."

Shaking her head, she hushes him with her mouth. Possibilities swirl his mind, as numerous and insistent as the crickets outside.


End file.
